The Equation

In a known and specific equation that many chose to call “life”, the constant reoccurrence of some variables shows me the invariability of the constant.

I was never meant for this world. That’s the constant. I am the constant, me as that sense of inadequacy. That is something I have to live with every single day of my life: knowing that whatever I do, whatever form my personality shifts into daily, I will never fit with my surroundings.

Those are the variables, the surroundings. The city I live in, the people I meet and love, my hopes and aspirations, the political regime that is en vogue at the time of my life, the ideological concept behind every human action and reaction; those are things that appear to change in the world. I do note however that some of the variables keep appearing more often that randomly. And the reoccurrence of those variables, when they are viewed and understood by other humans as “truths”; those are the ones that provoke in me the said feeling of inadequacy. If those are truths and common knowledge, am I merely to conform to them, for the sake of peaceful societal coexistence? Am I destined to become what I see only because those are the variables that appear more often?

Please remember that those are variables only because people can change them (to a certain limit). You can move to another country or another city, meet new people everyday, get a different job or a promotion, acquire different and broader tastes in music, art and food; if you disagree with the political regime you live in, you can try and make a revolution or simply change your political views on the subject. On the other hand, if the regime is sound enough, it will provide its citizens with its own democratic process of renewal (whether that is an illusion or not is not the subject of this essay).

And people seem to be just fine with that, changing the variables they can or are allowed to change. In Portugal, we have a saying (that was made into a song by one of our most respectable popular musicians, António Variações) that goes something like “Change your life”. It is difficult to understand the idiom with a literal translation, but the song helps when it tells you that you can “change your life if you don’t live happily / change your life, there’s always time for a change / change your life, you shouldn’t live under strains / change your life if there is life pounding inside you”.

For many people, it’s simple. Change a variable; change the whole set of variables, those you know and can control. Change your haircut. Get a crazy tattoo. Get married. Live alone. Have children. Adopt. Adopt a pet. Buy more books. Rest more. Work more. Make more money. Spend less money. See a foreign country. Buy a trailer and go see the world. Sell your house. Give it to the poor. Become an artist. Learn music. Call your father. Go meet your mother. Find your brother. Cut relations with your family. Go gay. Go back to the closet. Get a girlfriend. Dump your boyfriend. Become obnoxious. Become nicer. Be selfish. Give more. Set your priorities in life. Live free of goals and responsibilities.

Let’s not forget that there are those variables you do not know and cannot control: the will of an omnipotent power superior to yours (if you believe in that); the forces of nature; and of course, other people’s ability to change their own variables, interfering, whether on purpose or by accident, on your own equation (and by equation, I mean life).

My present state of mind forces me to drag away from the question of the variables (and even more from the question of the equation itself, the whole question of the purpose of life) to focus philosophically on one thing and one thing only: the constant. Me.

Everything else changes and even our own identity can and will change as we grow, as we become more mature, as we live more and new experiences and as we change those other variables. Everyone tells you that you look peppier when you get a fresh haircut in the summer. Maybe it’s the summer, maybe it’s the beautiful girls walking around in their bikinis; maybe the haircut did make you look more handsome than ever so now you’re more confident, slightly happier or more hopeful. Who knows? But it’s still you. Maybe a more confident “you”. Maybe a “you” that will get laid more often. But it’s you. Trust me, it’s still you.

Because I know that it’s still me every time. After every change, after every battle, after every strain; it’s always me. I can’t change into another (though I sense something like that is happening right now) and I can’t change into something other than myself. As the idiom goes, I can’t shed my skin.

Which begs the question: am I wrong? I am out of place; that I know. But am I wrong? Am I fated to conform and comply like everyone else to the mere possibility of changing the variables? Are we all destined to comply? Is it a precondition of life, to accept the variables we do understand, to live with the ones we can change and merely conceive philosophically the ones that we do not know and understand, maybe subjugating to an external power that is greater than us?

All I know for now is that with this constant effort of trying to resolve life’s equation, or at least part of it, my eternal battle is set so that everyday I fight with myself to attain one more piece of certainty in relation to one variable. Not one of those variables I mentioned before; the variables inside myself: those pieces of identity that one collects every step of the way, towards the unknown, and never knowing which of those one should pick up and save as precious pieces of one’s heart, mind and soul or discard as rotten feelings of greed, selfishness and utter inadequacy towards the world, oneself and others.

A música do Variações está traduzida porque este texto foi originalmente publicado num site internacional, onde os "meus leitores" lêem geralmente em inglês. Desculpem a arrogância da coisa. Mas mais importante: espero que o António não se importe.